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Hi, my name is Deborah Jaramillo.

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I'm going to teach in the Department of
Film and Television at Oxford University.

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I'm not a journalist, I'm a media scholar,
so I approach TV news a

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bit differently than other folks.

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First and foremost, I'm interested in
television news as television, as a ratings

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-driven commercial artifact that juggles
the responsibilities of journalism with

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the stylistic and narrative
demands of television.

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As a result of this primary interest,
I'm also concerned with the way that the

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demands of television often adversely
affect the information we get, particularly

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during times of crisis when the appeal of
liveness in breaking news can overwhelm

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little things like facts.

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It's the fog of live television.

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The archive has a tremendous role to play
in helping researchers reconstruct the

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past as seen on television, but it also
helps us pinpoint precisely how history's

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televised narrative is already a construct,
a carefully crafted and

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complex set of signs and symbols.

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So I'd like to talk about the television
news archive in terms of accessibility

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and analysis and why both
of those things matter.

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My book, Ugly War, Pretty Package,
stemmed from my dissertation, and in that book

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I look at the first five days of
the 2003 invasion of Iraq from the

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point of view of film and television studies.

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So I was looking at the aesthetics,
the narrative, the character, and the

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marketing and merchandising of the war.

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When I started researching this in 2005,
I was in my fourth year of my PhD,

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meaning I was living off of my credit card,
and I didn't realize that this would

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factor so heavily into my ability to
access news coverage of the 2003 invasion.

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I actually had no trouble
finding CNN's coverage.

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I was at the University of Texas,
and their media center maintained a collection

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of CNN broadcasts.

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But in a move that makes perfect sense
to some people but was a bad decision in

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the long run, they neglected to
archive Fox News coverage of the war.

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CNN had become the newscast of record,
so why collect anything else?

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I needed over 100 hours of Fox News coverage,
so paying the Vanderbilt archive as

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wonderful as it is for that amount of time
was out of the question, even though I

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did wind up using them for a
few hours of CNN coverage.

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Vanderbilt had just started to put
clips online, but I needed days

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of coverage, not clips.

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I had to rely on the kindness of strangers,
namely a journalism professor at the

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University of Arizona, who had never met me,
but who didn't think twice about

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mailing me every single Fox News tape
that her department had recorded.

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She saved my dissertation
and ultimately my book.

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This was only six years ago,
and it was very low-tech.

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It was videotapes and snail mail.

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It got the job done,
but I could have done without the anxiety.

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Once the problem of access was solved,
the next one revealed itself when I was

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transcribing the coverage and
conducting the actual analysis.

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It was less of a problem and more of
an intellectually complicated new

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experience, the experience of
watching five 24-hour news cycles.

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Nobody does that.

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As a television scholar,
this was a very exciting prospect.

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It forced me to argue implicitly that
the basic unit of analysis of cable news

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is the 24-hour cycle.

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It's not one particular program,
and it's not one particular day part.

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This might seem to be a silly concern to you,
but one of the most fundamental

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questions to TV scholars is, what is the text?

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Is it the scripted program?

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Is it the scripted program plus commercials?

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Is it the block of programming?

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The question becomes actually quite profound
when you consider that most people,

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even news jumpies, consume news in
snippets or in hour-long blocks.

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When you decide to study the news,
and not just quantitatively, but with an eye

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to aesthetics and narrative,
you've made the decision to remove

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news from its normal context.

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Even though much of my motivation was
to reinsert news into the television

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context, the experience of watching hours
of news in a cubby in my university's

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media center, and the sadness of rewatching
the shock and awe bombing next to

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strangers who were all watching something
else highlighted the very odd artifact

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that news becomes when
it's placed in an archive.

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So why does any of this matter?

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Television news, broadcast or cable,
has always been understood to be

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an ephemeral television text.

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Certain clips,
and I emphasize the word clips, live

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on and pop up again and again.

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The moon landing, Cronkite's announcement of

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Kennedy's death, the Challenger explosion.

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But aside from those morsels and those
nuggets of TV news history, there's been

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little effort to save,
to catalog, and to archive.

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When CNN released its Persian
Gulf War coverage on home

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video, it was composed of highlights.

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Again, these were the morsels that stood out,
the televisual moments of anti

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-aircraft artillery fire seen
through night vision lenses.

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But those morsels probably accurately
represented how most people

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experienced the war in their living rooms.

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Researchers can't live on morsels.

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It's only when you can lay out every
moment of concentrated coverage, and truly

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study it as a coherent text that you
can detect and explain the patterns and

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motifs in the genre of television news.

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See, I've come to believe that
the ephemerality of 24-hour

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news encourages sloppiness.

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I've worked in live television,
and I know that screw-ups can happen.

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When you couple liveness with the
pressure of a breaking news story, the

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potential for disaster is huge.

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The idea is that everyone will forgive
CNN and Fox for living in the heat of

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the moment and speculating wildly.

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One news cycle will simply replace the last.

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And short of the satirical interventions
of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, no

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one will really hold TV news accountable
for the problematic statements,

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characterizations, and images that can
dominate during moments of crisis.

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The Internet Archive changes this.

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The Archive replaces ephemerality with
permanence and gives television the

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same respect as the written word.

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The Archive allows for intensely
close readings and critical

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interpretations of TV news.

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When TV news becomes institutionalized
in this way, it's much easier to study.

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This is a gift to people like me,
and especially to students and independent

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scholars who lack the resources that
a university job often provides.

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And of course, the 9-11 TV News Internet
Archive is a gift to people like my

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students, who were barely old enough
to grasp what was going on in 2001.

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It opens up so many avenues for research
and discovery, both critical and casual,

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and that value can't be overstated.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.